I'm on the Apocalypse mission (regular difficulty) and contrary to the mission instructions I did not attack early. I've researched the entire research tree and I have four other team members who have also researched the entire tree (through trading we all have every technology). My allies aren't doing much by way help at this point.

The Dread Lords at this point can't beat me, or at least not with their current game plan. WIth soldiering maxed out and plenty of colonists they haven't been able to take any of the 6 worlds I control.

None of their ships individually are that big or that great, but any time they can get even a shot off, they seem to destroy one of my ships, even if they're carrying lots of defense. I can get a fleet where with each of my ships' attack can kill one of their ships, but that really only helps when I have initiative 'cause when they have initiative they always destroy at least two of my ships (they usually fly in groups of 2 or maybe 3). The real problem is that I can only keep initiative so long when by sheer numbers they get initiative and start whittling away whatever fleet I've managed to put together.

I can't sustain any starbases, they just get killed. The fleets I've tried to hit them with so far consist of big ships with lots of defense and a ton of firepower. I'm thinking about switching to swarms of small ships with as much gunnery as I can put on them and not care about defense at all since defense doesn't seem to do anything.

I have any ship, any weapon, any ship defense available to me. Does anyone have any advice here? This is way late-stage and if I could find a way to start clearing away more ships than they can produce I will inevitably win because they aren't making any ground against my other team members either it's just that I can't get the tid emoving my way.

Thanks in advance for any information provided.